Mental Disorder, Illness and Biological Disfunction

Summary

Introduction

This paper will be about the relationship between mental disorder and physical disorder. I shall also be concerned with the connection between these notions and the notion of ‘illness’.

I shall begin with the ‘anti-psychiatry’ view that the lack of a physical basis excludes many familiar mental disorders from the category of ‘illness’. My response to this argument will be that anti-psychiatrists are probably right to hold that most mental disorders do not involve any physical disorder, but that they are wrong to conclude from this that these mental disorders are not illnesses.

My arguments in this paper will be philosophical rather than empirical. My conclusions will be informed by recent philosophical analyses of notions like ‘mental state’ and ‘biological purpose’. How they might apply to particular mental disorders, such as depression, say, or schizophrenia, is not for me to say. This will depend on the detailed empirical nature of such disorders, and this is something about which I am relatively ignorant, and about which even the experts disagree. My aim here is to clear away some of the more abstract issues, so that we will know better what to say if we ever are in full command of the empirical facts.